


I'll Be Seeing You

by trickybonmot



Series: Gifts and Challenges [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic bed sharing, Reunion, Swearing, john is made of rage, rage cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickybonmot/pseuds/trickybonmot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com/post/56048461490/the-results-are-in-and-for-challenge-3-your-prompt">Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 3</a>.  John is haunted by memories of Sherlock.  Or perhaps they're more than memories...</p><p>The inspiration for this fic is a classic tune, but for your listening pleasure I highly recommend <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Corrina+Repp/_/I%27ll+Be+Seeing+You">this version</a> by Corrina Repp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Seeing You

It wasn’t that he couldn’t get over it.   He did, he had; it was the rest of the world that kept holding on. The front table at Angelo’s, the steps of the British Museum, certain corners of certain streets. Certain colors of coats, certain textures of hair. These things stubbornly clung to the memory of Sherlock Holmes. 

And never mind the Baker Street flat, which had thrown itself into a permanent nostalgic sulk, like a bereaved mother too burdened with the impedimenta of the past to even get out of bed. That was why John had moved out, and why he had moved into a tidy, tiny, nondescript flat on the opposite side of town. There was nothing about it that would remind anyone of Sherlock Holmes, which was exactly what he liked about it.

Being over it meant that he could put his gun away in a locked safe in the top of his closet, because he certainly wasn’t going to be in any situation where it might be needed. He could also stop walking aimlessly around the vicinity of St. Bart’s, because he had it settled in his mind that there was nothing more to be seen there. He could stop asking Molly Hooper if she wanted to have lunch. He could also stop lurking outside the Diogenes Club, waiting to see who would come out (not that anyone important ever did; he suspected Mycroft of avoiding him). 

Anyway, nobody needed to avoid him now, because he was over it. It was fantastic. He was a new man. 

The only stain on his happiness was that he kept seeing Sherlock. At the edge of a park one day, he spotted him: someone tall, sharp-edged. But no, it was a college student, wrong in every way, dressed in wrinkled cargo shorts and carrying a skateboard, smiling carelessly at something a friend was saying. How could he have thought...? Shaking his head, John walked on. 

A few weeks later, when he was out to dinner with a slight, mild, blond woman, it happened again. Scanning the restaurant crowd, his eyes caught on someone lean and interesting, sitting at another table. But when he looked again, it wasn’t him, just a woman, with long dark hair and a blue silk top that showed sharp collarbones and a hint of scanty cleavage. She was toying with a package of cigarettes. When she noticed John staring, her ice-blue eyes became annoyed, and she looked pointedly away. John closed his eyes hard for a moment, then focused his attention on his date. 

There were other incidents, other people: an old homeless man whose elbow stuck out in a certain way, a harried stockbroker who held his head at a certain angle. A voice, a laugh, a gait. So many people carrying that memory around. Sherlock would have called them idiots. 

The last time it happened, John didn’t even look up. It was someone audacious, someone right in his path, someone who wanted a fight, maybe. From some distance off, John saw enough to know that he should not look more closely; he saw height, and bearing, and even that ridiculously dramatic wool coat. Eyes fixed forward, he shouldered past. 

“John?”

The voice wasn’t loud, but it stopped him in is tracks for a moment. It was only a moment, though, and he didn’t turn around.

“John!” It came again, and he didn’t even pause, just kept walking.

Running footsteps, then a hand on his shoulder, spinning him around, forcing him to see. 

His first thought was that this wouldn’t do at all. He’d been _over it_ , for Christ’s sake, and now this bloody wanker wanted to destroy his equilibrium. 

“What.” He stopped, scraped a few more words together. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m back!” Sherlock proclaimed. He had a ridiculous grin on his face, which was just starting to fade as he took in John’s reaction to his sudden appearance. “I’ve been working, but the job’s nearly done. And I...well, I wanted so see you.” This sentiment trailed off, sounding almost like a question.

“Sherlock. You...” John groped, unable to compose a single meaningful thought. 

“I _was_ hoping you’d be a little bit happier to see me,” Sherlock complained. It was a joke. Sherlock was alive, and he was making fucking _jokes_. 

“Happy to see you?” John echoed, quietly at first. He struck away the weight of Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder. “Happy to _see_ you?” His voice was getting louder, welling up from the deep place where it had been momentarily driven by surprise, and, oh, hello, he was quite recovered now, and his voice wanted _out_. The more words he said, the louder it got. “You fucking arsehole. You fucking cruel, insane, manipulative _cock!_ ” 

He was vaguely aware that people were staring. He saw himself momentarily through their eyes, through Sherlock’s eyes: an angry little gnome of a man, red-faced and shaking, losing his shit in broad daylight. Well fuck them anyway. 

“John, I didn’t--” Sherlock’s face was doing something strange, but John was not interested in looking at it. His voice did, however, get quiet again.

“I wish I’d never met you, you son of a bitch. Just go away, Sherlock. Get out of my life.”

And with that, John turned on his heel. He did not flee, but he did walk quickly away, rubbing the blur out of his eyes as necessary to see where he was going. He went into a tube station, and boarded the first train that came. Some time later, when his sleeve was damp and his eyes felt like a couple of sandy holes in his head, he got off again and boarded a different train that was heading toward his own neighborhood. It took a long time to get home; he’d gone quite a distance in the wrong direction. 

He went to bed early. On the edge of dreaming, he saw Sherlock’s face again, saw that look which he had been unwilling to acknowledge before. _No good_ , he thought, before he slept. _Too late for that._

***

He awoke before dawn. The room was quiet, expectant, and he knew that he was not alone. Within the shadows stood a deeper shadow; though the presence was familiar, it made his heart pound, and he could not speak.

“John.” Sherlock spoke just louder than a whisper, so that the dark parts of his voice came seeping in around the edges.

John didn’t answer. It was obvious that Sherlock knew he was awake. He waited. The shadow detached itself from the greater darkness, crept nearer. 

“I know this is...” The voice paused, and John heard him take a breath, carefully controlled. “Irregular.”

The voice matched up in John’s mind with the face from earlier: pale, afraid. 

“What did you think would happen?” John asked at last. He could hear the way his nose was still clogged from crying, hatefully childish, but he went on. “Showing up that way. I thought you were dead, you know?” 

“I know.” 

John waited to hear what he would say next, how he would explain that it had been necessary, that faking suicide so completely that even his _best friend_ couldn’t be let in on the trick had been the only way to solve his problem, and John was ready to fight him on that, ready to fucking tear him a new one if that was the way he wanted to go.

“If you’d like,” Sherlock said, so quietly, just a whisper in the dark, “I could stay dead. I wouldn’t trouble you anymore. Is that...what you’d prefer?”

“Christ!” John squeezed his eyes shut, wounded. “No, that’s not what I’d prefer.”

The shadow drew closer still; John heard a floorboard creak. He opened his eyes to see Sherlock’s face looming over him, drawn into tense lines. He looked lost, but solid. This was really him, not some memory, some ghost. John reached out a hand. 

“C’mere.” 

When Sherlock’s cold fingers interlaced with his own, John tugged, and Sherlock followed the motion down onto the bed, sitting gracelessly. John wrapped an arm around his torso and curled close. After a confused moment, Sherlock arranged himself, slipping off his shoes before he hoisted his feet onto the bed so that he could lie on his side with John pressed along his back. John was nearly naked under his sheet, but Sherlock was still fully clothed, still wearing his overdramatic coat, which scratched John’s cheek and smelled of wool and tobacco and Sherlock’s hiding places. Spooning him was like embracing a badly-wrapped package, but John pulled him close, squeezing hard enough to feel his warmth through the fabric, his pulse, his breath. Sherlock lay very still. 

“If you ever do anything like that again, I will kill you for real. Do you understand?”

Sherlock nodded, a slight motion of curls against John’s forehead.

“You have no idea why I’m angry, do you?”

Sherlock answered promptly, his words coming fast and tense. “You think the fact that I didn’t tell you my plan shows that I never valued your companionship. That all I wanted you for was a dupe, a pawn.”

“Logical,” John said, pressing his forehead lower into Sherlock’s back, “but wrong.”

Sherlock was quiet for a moment; John could hear his brain working. “Why, then?”

“Because you couldn’t believe that I would do anything for you, you git. I would have kept any secret. And then you smashed my heart into the pavement.” Christ, he didn’t want to cry in front of Sherlock. He fell silent.

“I am sorry,” Sherlock said. His hand came to rest atop John’s where it was clutched in the front of his coat. “I had no idea it would affect you this way.”

“That’s because. You are. An _idiot_.” John’s fingers clutched Sherlock’s with bruising force. He pressed his head hard against Sherlock’s back, eyes squeezed shut, pulling and pushing at the same time. 

“Will you let me explain?” Sherlock asked. 

His coat was rough against John’s forehead. His chest beneath John’s hand was still, waiting. John scrubbed his face back and forth against the wool, then, finally, nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “But in the morning. I need sleep.”

“All right.” Sherlock’s chest rose and fell three times. “Should I stay here?”

“If you try to leave, I will handcuff you to the bed.”

“All right,” he said again. 

They lay still for a while. Then John snaked upward to rest his face more comfortably against the back of Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock adjusted his grip on John’s hand, and tugged it into a snug position beneath his ribs.

“Goodnight then,” John said.

“Goodnight, John.”


End file.
